


Shock and Aucasaurus

by iarrannme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bureaucracy, College, Dinosaurs, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Glitter, Journalism, Mad Science, Michelle Jones-centric, POV Michelle Jones, POV Multiple, Shock Collars, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iarrannme/pseuds/iarrannme
Summary: Freshman orientation at MIT.  Shock collars.  Dinosaurs.  Just another day.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Michelle Jones, Hulk & Michelle Jones, Maria Hill & Michelle Jones, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 42
Collections: Academia fic, Focus on Female Characters, I Needed a Laugh Today, Women of the MCU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Domenika Marzione (domarzione)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Recursive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547360) by [Domenika Marzione (domarzione)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione). 



> _I think there should be more dinosaurs in fanfic._  
>  _Freshmen should come with shock collars._  
>  – Domenika Marzione, replying to a comment on her work Recursive, 9/23/16
> 
> Well. Ask and ye shall receive. Even if it was over three years ago and you didn’t mean those ideas to be related. You didn’t have to specify the bureaucracy kink, all your readers know about that one. Pizza was as close as I could get to food porn, they’re entering freshmen after all.
> 
> Beta by SpideyFics - thanks!

“Ned’s coming,” Peter gasped, stepping back. They adjusted their clothes and ran their hands through their hair.

MJ grinned. “Who cares about superheroing? Being able to hear your roommate returning is the best thing about enhanced senses.”

“No it isn’t,” Peter murmured. MJ smirked, then meandered into the kitchen, nonchalantly reciting a litany under her breath of things they’d done using his senses and powers. She could see him blushing faintly when Ned opened the door a crack.

“Coming in, you better be done making out, I have awesome stuff,” Ned proclaimed cheerfully, then staggered through the door under a load of bags. Peter relieved him of a few, which clanked.

MJ brought her new mug of tea and her skeptical look back out to the main room. “Whatcha got, Leeds?”

“Freshman orientation swag!”

MJ sipped her tea.

Ned upended one of the bags. “Don’t drink tea at me like that, Alliance for Industrial Magic donated the shock collars this year!”

MJ gave him a flat look. “Aaaaand this is why I’m going to Columbia.”

“No, no – you get parts to make one, right, it’s like a puzzle, you can make one that lights up or plays music or there’s like five other goals to try, or people who are really cool make it do something that’s not even on the list, I wanted to try antigrav but they said antigrav and any form of flight propulsion are prohibited ’cause someone nearly choked themselves once, uh, sorry, that got dark fast, anyway, it only shocks you if you haven’t made it do anything cool by the end of orientation, and you can work together so they said it’s been like twenty years since anyone was actually shocked and they’re pretty sure that’s not even actually allowed and it was maybe a joke or an urban – uh, MIT – legend and anyway, Peter, I was thinking about trying for ‘shoots glitter’ and ‘plays any Star Wars music other than the cantina stuff,’ how about you?”

MJ could see that her nerds were lost to her for the evening, so she made herself comfortable on the couch and got back into her biography of Mary Ann Shadd Carey.

Sometime after she’d drifted off during the argument over the orientation of the glitter-blaster nozzle, she became vaguely aware of Peter picking her up and carrying her to bed, talking to Ned about testing in Killian Court tomorrow morning. The last thing she paid any attention to was Peter spooning her and trying to be quiet about getting her hair out of his mouth.

The next morning, Peter seemed on edge. Ned had to try three times before Peter joined in singing the Imperial March, which was odd even before caffeine. MJ nudged Peter and raised an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged. “Something’s off, I dunno. Gonna bring the suit. You’ve got our spare key so you can get back in here if you have to run?”

MJ frowned. “Yes, but if someone’s after you, they’d be expecting –”

Peter shook his head, laughing ruefully at himself. “I’m probably just being paranoid. But you two could wear the earpieces? Just in case?” He smiled at MJ. “Hang out with us if you want, or we can meet for lunch.”

MJ put the tiny Stark Industries earpiece in, shrugging. “Going to freshman orientation for a school I’m not going to, the week before I have to sit through my own: idiocy or the height of nihilist-absurdist humor? Actually, I _will_ come see everyone testing shock collars on themselves, it’d be awesome to show up next week with a piece about freshmen gleefully enacting overly on-the-nose metaphors about capitalism and the level of dorkiness required to make humor an opiate for the engineering masses.”

“I’ve been hanging around you too much, I actually understood that.” Ned handed her a bag. “You can carry the extra glitter, if this works I’m gonna need a _lot_.”

Killian Court was crowded with small groups of freshmen in various stages of sleepiness or excitement, debating and tinkering and showing off. Older student volunteers and staff in orientation T-shirts threaded through the crowd, offering encouragement, directions to bathrooms and breakfast, and reminders that no one should test ahead of the scheduled 10:00 chaos.

Peter got twitchier as 10:00 approached. “Whatever’s making me nervous is all around us,” he said, craning his neck for the twentieth time to check roofs and windows looking down onto the grass.

MJ snorted. “Yeah, accepting the shackles that deliver punishment if you don’t produce is usually less obvious than this, I can see how planning to actually put it on and turn it on yourself would –”

“All right, everyone, testing in one minute, get your collars on! We promise no shocks today, you’ve got til the end of the week!” a disturbingly chipper voice said through a loudspeaker.

“I think I’ve got it set to shoot glitter sequentially going all the way around in time to the Imperial March!” Ned hissed excitedly to Peter, settling his collar around his neck.

MJ shook her head and was about to step back well out of glitter range when she saw the look on Peter’s face: he’d identified the threat.

“And! Test in three – two –”

“Ned! Get the collar off-” Peter lunged towards Ned, pieces of his own collar falling to the ground.

“One –”

After that, it all got very loud, and very crowded, and very strange.


	2. Chapter 2

“So. That happened.” MJ kicked her heels and looked down into Killian Court from the edge of the roof above the Admissions Office. She tilted her head. “At least they’re not fighting. Yet. Which one’s Ned?”

Peter didn’t look away from texting Pepper. “I slapped a tracker on him before I got us out of there, hang on a sec –”

“Oh, never mind. Nobody else would wear that hat.” She pointed, then frowned. “How come all of everyone’s other clothes disappeared, but anyone who was wearing a hat still has it?”

Peter spared a glance below, then side-eyed her. “OK, score one for your eye for detail, but: most of a crowd of 1100 freshmen just got turned into dinosaurs by their shock collars, and the fact that some of them are wearing hats is the detail you’re stuck on?”

MJ shrugged. “I’m trying to imagine a world where this counts as shocking enough to freak out over.” She sighed. “Might like to live there, actually. Mostly I’m just ticked the only camera I have on me is my phone.” She nudged Peter. “If you’re done calling reinforcements, better get down there and help the still-humans get clear before they get stepped on or one of the ones with pointy teeth gets hungry. I’ll stay up here and help you spot them. Good thing it happened here so they’re mostly corralled.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah, in a sec, asking Pepper to get the cops to skip lights and sirens, don’t wanna see dinos stampede.”

“MIT should set you up a direct contact to their campus police.”

“That was supposed to be part of my extra day of orientation.” He sighed, kissed MJ briefly, and activated his mask as he webbed to another building and swung down into the mass of dinosaurs.

* * *

Ned claimed, afterwards, that he remembered everything, but couldn’t tell them “because the consciousness of a dinosaur is _amazing_ , but there’s no words in it.” The medical and counseling staff were eventually satisfied that at least there had been no lasting trauma and went away. Dr. Banner, on the other hand, was fairly disgruntled to get nothing informative out of any of those willing to speak to him.

Peter was simply annoyed that once all the still-humans were clear, he’d been banished to overwatch and emergency backup, because some of the carnivorous dinosaurs had started acting interested. “Like I was a cat-toy. So they said I had to be out of sight because the last thing they needed was a T. rex trying to jump to catch me on a swing.”

* * *

**Excerpt from Six-Month Follow-up on Freshmen Orientation Incident**  
**Report to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Graduate and Undergraduate Education**

Of the 1106 MIT freshmen transformed, 75% reported struggling with sensations of altered balance and phantom tail for at least one month. At six months, this has declined to 10%. Dr. Bruce Banner and Capt. Steven Rogers have consulted with staff and individual students on adjusting to (and in the former case, returning from) significant bodily transformation. We thank them for their efforts.

Of the 972 whose dinosaur form was herbivorous, 60% report at least one episode of attempting to graze; of the remainder who became carnivores, 95% report urges to chase prey, but only three report actually having done so. (None admit catching anything. Only one admits needing to be restrained.)

Counseling services were offered to all affected, and while initial uptake was over 98%, utilization dropped off rapidly; only 5% remain in therapy at six months, of which most report transitioning the focus of therapy to dinosaur-adjacent or unrelated issues. Counselors report ongoing serious concerns for only one student, who wishes to return to his dinosaur form (pterodactyl). Both MIT counselors and Dr. Banner are on call for this student.

Minor damage to the MacLaurin buildings and Killian Court was repaired within three months. As most of the damage was sustained when the Hulk prevented three _Tyrannosaurus rex_ from attacking their classmates, Dr. Banner offered to contribute to restoration costs. However, security videos show that the majority of the structural damage resulted from one T. rex’s efforts to escape Hulk’s roaring and from the impact of Thor’s hammer (on the ground, to knock the dinosaurs off their feet – he did not attack any students or buildings directly). We have therefore declined Dr. Banner’s offer. Thor and Lady Sif have assisted the construction crews in the repair work, for which we have extended our thanks.

No students or parents have sued, which we attribute to the combined effects of immediate and transparent outreach by the President’s office, counseling office, PR staff, campus and local police, SHIELD and the Avengers, as well as the speed with which the culprit was identified and arrested and the students returned to their previous states substantially unharmed. We particularly thank Princess Shuri of Wakanda for her assistance in identifying and negating the stolen Wakandan technology incorporated into the shock collars, and for liaising with the Wakandan Ministry of Justice to track the technology’s source.

See the One-Month Follow-Up Report for the immediate reaction on social media. At six months, the primary remaining effects are the occasional appearance of #MITisRAWRsome and requests to @MIT to make dino-transformation an official part of freshman orientation. The attached report from the Office of Communications goes into further detail.

Given the uncertain long-term effects and potential for further structural damage, making dino-transformation an official part of freshman orientation is not recommended.

* * *

MICHELLE JONES  
JRN 102 (Section 1, Ms. Delacourt)  
ASSIGNMENT 3

_Write a brief report of a public event with which you were involved or which affected you. Make your level of involvement clear, including perspective, potential biases, and any actions you took as part of the event or as a result of it. The reader should be able to judge your strengths and limitations as a narrator/reporter. Provide a link to a contemporaneous news account._

Last August, I was visiting friends entering MIT during their freshman orientation. I was in Killian Court when most of the freshmen got turned into dinosaurs (see article in MIT’s campus newspaper The Tech, thetech.com/news/shock-and-aucasaurus). I wasn’t transformed because I didn’t have a shock collar. (Even if I had, why wouldn’t you test it without putting it on, I mean…?)

My main biases are that I’m in favor of the Avengers because they brought me back from being Snapped and also one saved my life more directly in high school, and that I’m against rituals designed to subsume people into a corporate identity especially when there’s peer pressure or hazing (the shock collar thing) or mind-numbing boredom (the whole concept of freshman orientation, seriously all the info is online, just read it people).

The Tech already covered the main events, but the fun was in the sideshow. When I got out of the crowd of dinosaurs, I went to the rapid response area/perimeter set up along the southern edge of Killian Court to keep the dinos from getting out onto Memorial Drive. There were MIT and Cambridge police trying to keep students (human and dinosaur) calm, plus reps from multiple departments and agencies having a meeting. Pretty tense. As a student not even from MIT, I couldn’t do more than lurk around the edge, and I tried to record but they shut me down before long. The meeting was being run by a dark-haired woman from SHIELD. She couldn’t have gotten there more than two or three minutes before me but she seemed totally in charge. Here’s what I got:

 **Ms. In-Charge** : All right. Division of Comparative Medicine. You deal with all the research animals on campus?

 **DCM rep** : Uh, yeah, we usually do more like bullfrogs, shrews, hamsters, that kind of thing, we’re gonna have to call in some large-animal colleagues. Working on that. We’re not … we got people in EAPS who do dinosaurs, but they’re dead – I mean the dinosaurs, not the people, they’re fine –

 **Ms. In-Charge** : Right. Get back to me when you have recommendations from your colleagues. We need approach and herding strategies, food and shelter recommendations, and – Hawkeye, good, I was just getting to your part – we need recommendations for tranquilizers and contraceptives, you’re the delivery method for both.

[several people sputtering]

 **Ms. In-Charge** : Do I appear to be joking? Whether they’re healthy dinos or healthy college freshman on the inside, they’re not currently able to use condoms, and we are _not_ going to have baby dinos become part of this problem.

 **Unidentified** : Uh, Ma’am, is that really a priorit-

 **Ms. In-Charge** : If you put 1100 naked college freshmen together and removed whatever inhibition you might normally be able to scrape up in a naked college freshman’s brain, exactly how long do you think it would be before contraception became relevant?

 **Unidentified (same)** : Uh, yes Ma’am.

 **Hawkeye** : Aww, are we gonna see a –

 **Ms. In-Charge** : Agent Barton, dinosaurgy is _not_ a word and you will not use it, on pain of remaining the delivery method while we switch strategy to “dinosaur condoms.” Ms. Jones, you can clear the area with or without your phone. Dr. Banner, you and Agent Barton talk to DCM about –

I freaked out a little that she knew my name, and maybe I should have tried to stay and keep recording, but I was curious what the two Avengers would do, so I followed them. 

They headed for the perimeter. I heard Dr. Banner say he was contacting colleagues to get started figuring out how to reverse the process and wanted to “stay small for this one, there’s enough big green things in here right now and I can’t risk smashing the kids.” He’d hardly finished saying that when a couple of dinos started getting more insistent about approaching the perimeter. They didn’t look like carnivores but they were big and without being able to talk to them or use their weapons, the police looked super nervous.

Hawkeye said something to Dr. Banner, all I heard was “trust,” and then Dr. Banner sighed and became Hulk. Hawkeye said very calmly, “Hulk, don’t smash,” and Hulk gave him this look like he thought Hawkeye was a total idiot – it was funny, kind of – and then crossed his arms and stood up as straight as he could and sort of stared the dinosaurs down like he was their dad. One of them put its head down and Hulk started petting it like a good dog. (See photo.) He was even kind of like talking to it or rumbling at it or something. Does Hulk purr? Or maybe that was the dino.

That was how Hulk wound up being the main one interacting with the dinosaurs, because it turned out that nearly all of them liked getting their heads scratched but it wasn’t safe for anyone else to be out there. So he would come back to the perimeter and get food – they got big bales of hay or something and a few carcasses for the carnivores.

I wound up on a roof with Hawkeye – he was chill as long as I stayed out of his way. I think maybe they were dosing the food because I never actually saw Hawkeye shoot any dinos, it seems like that would have started a stampede anyway and I bet Ms. In-Charge thought of that pretty quick. Hulk wound up with this circle of blissed-out dinos lying around him with their heads as close to him as they could get and at first he looked really nervous. I don’t think he was afraid for himself, I think it was more like if things went south how would he keep from hurting them. I think Hawkeye thought the same because I heard him say, “Don’t worry, I got my Hulk-tranq arrow right here. I can have this in your ass before you even blink. Once we get this settled, you can tell me when, or you can do it yourself if you want, if you need help going to sleep. Tell you what, this weekend we’ll take a quinjet offshore, you can hulk out and jump and splash all you want.”

And then Hawkeye and I sat there on the roof for a couple more hours while things got dealt with like The Tech described. There was a little excitement with some carnivores near the end, but Thor just whacked the ground and they all fell over kinda stunned. Honestly, it was the most boring crisis I’ve been through lately. When we were getting ready to leave I worked up my nerve and asked Hawkeye if he and Hulk would mind having a student reporter along on the quinjet, because it seemed like there was a lot more to Hulk than smashing and that’s a story that should be told. He looked at me without answering for a while and then said he doubted they’d let a kid, excuse him, young adult student on the quinjet, especially miles from shore with the Hulk, but he’d talk to Hulk and Dr. Banner and maybe there could be an interview sometime.

Then I went back to my friends’ apartment and ate most of an entire pizza by myself, so I guess I was kinda stressed. Other than that and deciding never to wear a shock collar, which, let’s face it, not wearing a shock collar was already my default so no big, this event hasn’t affected me too much. Neither of my friends got hurt, so that was good.

_Ms. Jones – A solid start (though your writing style needs development) with a major flaw. I am well aware of why you chose to elide the identities of your “friends” at MIT. Because I see potential in you as the investigative reporter you profess to want to be – nice job identifying the interesting story buried within the obvious one – I’m going to assign you additional writing rather than stop at docking you points for deliberately omitting details the reader needs to judge your perspective. Here are the points I’d like you to consider in your essay, which I hope will be the starting point rather than the end of your thinking:_

_What are all of your motivations for failing to mention Peter Parker/Spider-Man and your own relationship with him? Who does your concealment of these facts help, who does it hurt, how, and how should you rank these concerns in your future writing? Consider that following Mr. Beck’s revelations (I expect you to have a great deal to say in Journalistic Ethics next semester), failing to mention Mr. Parker’s identity and your relationship is not truly hiding a secret, merely failing to draw attention to it in a way that will cause readers to question your integrity._

_What role does your relationship play in providing you access to events and sources? What are the advantages and disadvantages to you (personally and professionally) and to your readers when you use, or choose not to use, that access? Will you focus your career on areas where that access would be relevant, or focus elsewhere?_

_Because the omitted facts were so central to your perspective, I am awarding this assignment a D. I hope you will take the grade, this note and your additional assignment not as a judgment of **you** as a failure, but rather as a firm slap on the wrist meant to encourage you to up your game. I have 100 students in JRN 102. I do not write feedback essays often. Here is fertilizer: now grow._

## Epilogue

A week later, Hawkeye sent her a photo and added, “He says: ‘HULK SPLASH!!!!!’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [SweetInsanityArts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetInsanityArts/pseuds/SweetInsanityArts) is working on creating accompanying art, but it might be awhile. Subscribe to get notified when it's up!


End file.
